Where We Should Be

Tripping over myself, aching, begging you to come help

Conversations with Tin were far more frequent since the truth had come out. It was almost as though Tin gravitated towards him the moment he walked in the house, it played tricks on his heart. Though he'd thought that he couldn't possibly like the other man more, he'd been wrong. Outside of work, he saw signs that were more than a little alarming. One of his very best friends, Ae, had a boyfriend now, though apparently they'd been dating for quite a while and kept it quiet. Ae had always been the private sort, so it wasn't that surprising that he'd kept it between the two of them. The only reason it came out now was because they were in love, and it wasn't something he wanted hidden. The alarming signs he saw were from them. After the shock had worn off, the shock that he wasn't the only one (besides Type) in their friend group that liked guys, that was when the alarm had set in. He saw the way they looked at each other, the way they moved together, heard the words that left Pete, his boyfriend's lips about Ae. They all reflected everything he felt about Tin. He was in love, one sided, unrequited, painful love.

Tul seemed to notice a difference in the way they were around each other, that maybe whatever he'd hoped to achieve by telling his lies hadn't gone according to plan. He saw when they'd find time to stand around and talk, the quiet laughter as jokes flowed between them, as a friendship blossomed. So instead of continuing to push it, he kept him busy. Christmas was drawing ever nearer, and instead of Tul shopping for his son - as he should, Can thought, he gave Can a card with more Baht on it than he'd ever seen before, to go shop for Phu. The longer he spent around the family, the worse he felt not only for Tin but for Phu. He could see that Tul actually loved his son, they practically ran into each other's arms the moment Tul got home. But Tul was busy a lot, it left Phu in other peoples company far more than it left him in Tul's. On top of that, the gifts he received for Christmas should have been from Tul himself, picked out with love... not from Can.

Not only was Tul doing his best to keep him busy, Orn seemed determined to keep Tin at her side.

He had to admit, it was driving him slightly crazy. Now that she was home, when he and Tin did have the opportunity to talk, it was as if she had some sort of radar. The moment their eyes met, she was at his side, pulling him in the opposite direction. The looks she gave Can were angry, as though for some reason she saw him as more of a threat than ever. Tin wasn't interested in him in the same way Can was though, they were friends, that was the extent of it. She was the one that had a cutesy little necklace that hung from her neck that said love on half a heart, that sickeningly matched a bracelet Tin wore that had the other half of the heart with the word you on it. She had the ring. Perhaps it was his inability to keep his eyes off her fiance that caused her to act the way she did. It was his own undoing really, the more he fell in love, the harder it was to even look Orn in the face, to stare back defiantly when she looked down on him. It didn't help that he'd walked into the hall once to the pair of them just moments from kissing.

He wasn't sad that he'd ruined it, but there was no denying the pain in his chest over what he'd almost witnessed, the only satisfaction lay with how angry she'd been over it. It was as though he'd ruined a first kiss, as though they hadn't gotten even close to it before. It wasn't a question he was willing to ask, so he'd just turned as quickly as he could to dash away. They were engaged, far past the point of just dating, of course they'd kissed before. It wasn't a surprise that he had found them close to a kiss, but it didn't do any good to tell his heart that it never listened anymore.

It wasn't long after he'd accidentally ruined a kiss that he found himself sitting in Tul's home office, typing up some of the notes on a laptop the company had given him. It helped Tul organize his notes better if he could read them in a proper format - Can's handwriting left a lot to be desired, so he had a list of rules Can had to follow, putting them all in a certain order. He glanced up as he heard the door open, fully prepared to tell Tul that he was nearly done and just needed a few more minutes. His eyes fell back to the computer the moment Orn walked in, her face the very picture of disgust as he focused on his work. It took every bit of him to calm his temper, to keep himself from telling her to quit looking at him like that. Whatever her problem was, he hadn't done anything, and he didn't much care what she thought either.